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Bob Denver Cancer

For my generation of latchkey kids, there was no better supplemental TV friend than Gilligan.

Gilligan was Bob Denver, who died Friday at age 70 of complications from cancer treatment. Earlier this year he had undergone quadruple-bypass surgery.

It's not hard to believe Denver is gone. Everyone dies. The only remaining "Gilligan Island" cast mates are Ginger (Tina Louise), Mary Ann (Dawn Wells) and the professor (Russell Johnson).

But it's difficult to grasp that Gilligan grew old enough to expire. On TV, Denver remains immortalized as the youngish and naive boating first-mate on "Gilligan's Island," which still airs in reruns on the Hallmark Channel.

Theoretically, Denver's show never should have lasted. It was dumb, stupid and moronic -- all three. A boat goes out in the Pacific for a three-hour cruise and shipwrecks on a deserted island for many years with a skipper, Gilligan, a movie star, a Kansas girl, a brainiac and a millionaire couple. How absurd.

"Gilligan's Island" did last, living for just three years -- 98 episodes in 1964 to 1967, on CBS -- but surviving in syndicated perpetuity for decades afterward. Why? Largely because reruns swamped daytime TV back in the days when there was no real cable. Most of us had just ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS, and no self-respecting latchkey kid would watch PBS and the Cookie Monster.

So it would be, like, 3:30 p.m. on a Tuesday. I'd go home and wait for Gilligan to get hit on the head by the skipper's cap. That wasn't funny. It was reassuring, like seeing a McDonald's on a vacation.

The linchpin of "Gilligan's Island" was, of course, Denver, stuck in the same outfit every day (white floppy hat, red shirt), engaging in physical comedy and silly dialogue that fit the times. Pop comedy was almost exclusively lowbrow and un-ironic back then.

Denver played Gilligan as such a mental lightweight, the character could be maddening to watch. And yet, Gilligan had a great big heart. And he was, sometimes, the only other idiot in my living room. That's why I watched every episode two, three or even four times. It was Gilligan or "Sesame Street" or soapy-sucky "Another World."

Denver took to the part a lunacy from his acting past. From 1959 to 1963, he'd portrayed the flighty sidekick Maynard G. Krebs in the sitcom "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis." Maynard was TV's first, pre- hippie "beatnik," another term lost to history.

"Dobie Gillis," which relied more on verbal comedy (with jazzy background music) than the slapstick of "Gilligan," didn't live on as the castaways did. But to Baby Boomers, Denver was as memorable in episodes featuring such titles as "The Chicken From Outer Space."

Denver tried other parts on other shows, but Gilligan was his fate, so he'd show up on TV ("Baywatch," for instance, and one awesome appearance on "Roseanne") and at conventions in that floppy hat and red shirt.

He was invariably described as a sweet guy. That came through on BobDenver.com, where he answered the frequently answered question, "Did it hurt when the Skipper hit you with his hat?"

"Since I was getting whacked with his hat every time I turned around," Denver responded, "it's a good thing Alan [Hale Jr.] and I liked each other so much. He really was a gentle giant and made a big effort never to hurt me in any of the gags we did. Even the hammock gags, where he'd fall on me or vice versa, never injured either of us."

One of the great jokes of TV history is that the "Gilligan" castaways kept trying and failing to get off the island, which didn't happen until a 1978 TV movie, "Rescue From Gilligan's Island." It was followed in 1979 by "The Castaways on Gilligan's Island" and 1981's "The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island." Denver had a radio show in recent years, until cancer gave him a voice box.

It's interesting to consider that Denver -- who died in North Carolina with his wife, Dreama, and four children by his side -- grew up before the TV age. He said he listened to BBC radio as a boy. So a man who never saw a TV as a kid was a virtual friend to a nation of us as an adult.

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